"Then I will throw in for you a few more things," said Gronski; "drunkenness, cynicism, a stupid pose of despair, thoughtless hypercriticism, scoffing at misfortune, fouling one"s own nest, spitting at blood and suffering, undermining faith in the future, and blasphemy against the nation. Have you yet enough?"
"I have not enough of wine. Order some more, order some more!"
"I will not order any more wine, but I will tell yet more, that you err in claiming that these are native products. They are brought by a certain wind which evidently has fanned you."
But Swidwicki, who this time had no desire to quarrel but did have a desire to drink, evidently wishing to change the subject of the conversation, unexpectedly exclaimed:
"Apropos of winds, what a pity that such sensible people as the Prussians commit one gross blunder."
Gronski, who had already risen to bid him farewell, was overcome temporarily by curiosity.
"What blunder?" he asked.
"That they a.s.sume super-villeiny to be superhumanity."
"In this you are right."
"I feel a contempt for myself as often as I am right."
"Then we will leave you with your wine and your contempt."
Saying this, Gronski nodded to Dolhanski and they departed. Swidwicki"s last words, however, caused him to reflect; so after a while he said:
"Now people"s minds are haunted by the Prussians and they are reminded of them by the slightest cause. After all, Swidwicki"s description of them was apposite."
"If you knew how little I am interested in Swidwicki"s descriptions."
"Nevertheless, you vie with him and talk in a similar strain," answered Gronski.
After which, pursuing further the train of his thoughts, he said:
"Nietzsche also did not perceive that the susceptibility and appreciation of other people"s woes becomes manifest only upon the culmination of the creative ..."
"Good, good, but at this moment I am more interested in what Krzycki is going to do about Miss Anney."
Dolhanski, who could not endure Swidwicki, would have been sorely afflicted, if he had suspected that the same question occurred to the latter"s mind.
Remaining alone, Swidwicki recalled Gronski"s recital and began to laugh, as the thought of such unusual complications amused him immensely. He imagined to himself what excitement must have prevailed at Krzycki"s and at Pani Otocka"s, and how far the affair would agitate the circles of their relatives and acquaintances. And suddenly he began to soliloquize in the following manner:
"And if I paid Miss Anney a visit? It even behooves me to leave her a card. That would be eminently proper. I may not find her in--that does not matter much, but if I should find her in, I will try to see whether her legs are not too bulky at the ankles. For culture, education, even polish may be acquired, but delicate ligaments of the legs and hands it is necessary to inherit through a whole series of generations. That furious Pauly, nevertheless, has a sufficiently thin ligature. The devil, however, knows who her father was, I will go. If I do not find one, I shall find the other."
And he went. He was admitted not by the man-servant but by Pauly; so he smiled at her in his most ingratiating manner and said:
"Good-day, pretty fennel-flower! Is Panna Hanka Skibianka at home?"
"What Hanka Skibianka?" she asked in surprise.
"Then, the little lady does not know the great tidings?"
"What great tidings? I do not know any."
"That the mistress of the little lady is not named Miss Anney?"
"Do not upset our heads."
"I give the little lady my word of honor. Ask Pan Gronski, or Pan Krzycki, who is chewing off his fingers from mortification. I give you my word of honor. I also could tell you more, but if the little lady is not curious I will go. Here is my card for Panna Ski-bian-ka."
The eyes of the girl sparkled with curiosity. She took the card mechanically.
"I do not say that you should go, but I do not believe," she said hurriedly.
"And I know yet more."
"What is it?"
"I will whisper it in your ear."
It did not occur to Pauly that there was no necessity for Swidwicki speaking in a whisper. She leaned towards him with a palpitating heart and, though he flooded her with his breath, saturated with the odor of wine, she did not withdraw her head.
"What is it?" she repeated.
"That Panna Skibianka is a peasant woman from Zarnow!"
"That is untrue!"
"As I love G.o.d."
And, saying this, he suddenly smacked her ear with a broad kiss.
IV
Miss Anney"s letter bore the impress of extraordinary simplicity. At the beginning she said that from the moment when he proposed for her hand she was compelled to reveal her former name; while in the continuation it contained an equally simple account of herself and her family from the time of their departure from Rzeslewo. This sad course of events she related in the following words:
"My father came from Galicia and had in America relatives of whom he heard that through labor they had ama.s.sed fortunes. Learning of this, he decided to settle there also and seek his fortune beyond the ocean.
We left Rzeslewo at a time when you were in Warsaw. I knew how to write as I was taught that in the manor-house, and would have informed you about this if I had known your address. We went, not saying anything to anybody, to Hamburg, and at that place there occurred what often happens to peasant emigrants. The agent tricked us, defrauded us of our money, and placed us on a vessel bound not for America but for England.
Thrown upon the pavements of London, we soon fell into dire want. For the pa.s.sage to America there now was no means. My mother died of typhoid fever in a hospital and father, from despair and nostalgia, declined rapidly in health. Under these circ.u.mstances we were found by Mr. Anney, one of the best and n.o.blest men in the world, a friend and patron of the Poles, who gave us employment. But the succor came too late, and my father died in the course of a year. I remained in the factory and worked in it until the accident which changed my status entirely. The Anney family had only one child, a daughter, whom they loved beyond everything in the world and surrounded with a solicitude all the greater because she was threatened by a pulmonary ailment. Once it happened that Miss Anney, while visiting the factory, was almost carried away by the driving-wheel of the machinery. I rushed to her a.s.sistance, imperilling a little my own life, and from that time the grat.i.tude of the Anney family for me had no bounds. They took me from the factory to themselves, and in this manner I became the companion and afterwards the bosom friend of their daughter. A Pole, an emigrant of the year "63, a friend of Mr. Anney and a man well educated, taught us both, and me, separately, in Polish. I endeavored to benefit, as much as lay in my power, from these lessons, and after two years was able to approach a little the intellectual plane of my friend and my environment. But Agnes--for such was the Christian name of Miss Anney--began to fail in her health. Then Mr. Anney sold his factory and we all, including our instructor, removed to Italy. There about three years were pa.s.sed in a search for the best climate for our dearest patient. All efforts proved unavailing, however, as G.o.d took His angel unto Himself. After Agnes" death, the Anneys, remembering that I loved with my whole soul our dead one, adopted me as their own child and gave me not only their family name, but desiring to overcome their despair, suffering, and sorrow, even the Christian name of the deceased.
Nevertheless, the sorrow could not be overcome, and though I tried with my whole heart to be to them some sort of comfort in life, in the course of two years both followed their greatest love.
"And this is the end of my history. And after that came those events which brought me nearer to you; therefore I desire to justify my conduct in your eyes. I have a right to the name which I bear, and my life from the time of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure.
Conscience reproaches me with only one new error. This was that I did not confess to the Anneys that I already was unworthy of their care.
But for such a confession I lacked strength. I loved too much my Agnes and feared that they would separate me from her. Later I did not want to add to their affliction. I did not have the strength. At times, also, I think that now when they look upon me from heaven and see everything, they forgive me for keeping that secret. Beyond this I once more repeat and swear that my life has been pure. But in my memory I have only coffins and coffins, and of my Rzeslewo days there remains to me only the recollection of you. I could not forget either my sin or my happiness. Often during the life of my adopted sister, while gazing into her chaste eyes, I struggled with remorse, and at the same time I wept from intense longing. After that, being left alone in the world, I had nothing to cherish in my heart, and I began to yearn yet more.
When, after the death of the Anneys, I became acquainted and grew intimate with Zosia Otocka in Brussels, I accidentally learned from a conversation that she was your relative. Then I related to her my entire life, not concealing anything, and she not only did not spurn me, but loved me yet more. Emboldened by her goodness, I confessed to her my longing for the old days and Rzeslewo. Perhaps it may be a new fault on my part that I confided to Zosia my insurmountable desire of seeing yet once more in my life, Jastrzeb, Rzeslewo, and--why should I not state the whole truth?--and you. Then Zosia said to me: "I understand you; ride with me to Jastrzeb as Miss Anney, as you cannot do otherwise. n.o.body will recognize you and you will take a reckoning with your own heart. Perhaps reality may extinguish the rainbow of recollections. If they are a.s.suaged forever, so much the better for you; if he should fall in love with you, so much the worse for him; if your former echoes reawaken, then we will a.s.sume that this was predestination." Such was Zosia"s advice, and for that reason, when your mother invited her and Marynia, I also accompanied them to Jastrzeb. But I do not wish to pa.s.s for any better than I am. I confess that on the road I always had in mind Zosia"s words: "If he falls in love with you, so much the worse for him," and I wished that to happen.
I was certain that you had entirely forgotten me, and I thought that if now you fell in love with me without any requital, that it would be a sort of condign punishment for your forgetfulness and a kind of triumph for myself and--if not such a womanly revenge as books tell of,--at least a great solace to my self-love. But it happened otherwise, for I forgot to take into account that I had a heart, not of foreign books, but of a Polish village--simple and faithful. When I saw Rzeslewo, Jastrzeb, and you, I wanted only to weep and weep, as I wept at Pan Zarnowski"s funeral, and I discovered within me that Hanka, who years before loved you with her first childish love and afterwards with such affection, did not love any one else. You know, sir, what happened further. If you do not return, I will not bear any resentment towards you, but do not harbor any ill-will against me. I, too, merely skirted along the rim of happiness."
The signature was "Hanka." Ladislaus" chin quivered from time to time while he was reading the letter and his eyes grew dim. He began to repeat the signature "Hanka, Hanka." He rose abruptly and paced over the room with big steps. His thoughts rolled into a ball in his head like clouds in the heavens; they collected and scattered in all directions like a startled stud of horses on the wild steppes of the Ukraine. He read the letter a second and third time, and under its influence there began to glide before his eyes pictures of the past as distinct as if all that which occurred some time ago had happened but yesterday. He recalled those bright moonlight nights when he stole away to the mill, and that village girl, fragrant with the hay, who, to the question of whether she loved him, whispered in reply, "Of course," and threw her yet half-childish arms around his neck and hugged him to her breast with such strength that no other love could make a sincerer avowal. He recollected that he nevertheless loved her at that time, and when he missed her, longed for her, and even inquired of the people about the blacksmith"s family--but with reserve and faint-heartedly, as fear closed his lips.
Subsequently that girl was erased from his memory so completely that even the light pangs of conscience which he felt on her account vanished; nothing remained. It was well with him in the world and he sought new sensations, while she was seized by the whirlwind of life and was hurled like a wretched leaf upon a foreign land, where she suffered from sheer starvation. Nevertheless, neither at that time, nor later, when good people took care of her, did she forget him nor did she cease to long for him. Ladislaus was not a deep connoisseur of the human soul; he felt, nevertheless, that what for him was simply a love adventure, a shallow enjoyment of the senses, a transient impression which disperses to the winds like the fragrance of flowers, for her became a new life; a surrender of her whole being and whole soul, too pure and too n.o.ble for her to seek a new happiness upon new paths. And now he understood why that coveted Miss Anney of to-day, charming as a dream, brilliant, surrounded by affluence and arousing admiration, wrote to him that she had a heart not of foreign books but of a Polish village--simple and faithful. He understood also why the letter was signed "Hanka." Suddenly and irrevocably were banished all his suspicions, and her words, "my life from the moment of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure," touched him to the extent that he began to upbraid himself that he should for a moment have thought that it could have been otherwise. At once he seemed to himself to be little, mean, and unworthy of that n.o.ble and exalted soul. But through his heart and head there coursed during the last moments so many thoughts, impressions, and feelings that he was uncertain whether the final sensibility of his own shortcomings and wretchedness would be lasting.